She is a young, dark-haired, slender 27-year-old woman with large glasses who takes the stand this Thursday. This Montessori school educator brilliantly takes on her role as a key witness by delivering her story. She is the “savior” of Océane who accuses a man of having raped her, on July 29, 2021, in an underground parking lot at Place de la Victoire, in Bordeaux. The man, a fifty-year-old, is on trial until this Friday before the Gironde criminal court.
This evening of July 29, the twenty-year-old leaves to join a friend in the city center of Bordeaux and parks in the Victoire parking lot. Alerted by the repeated growls of her dog and Océane’s pleas, she intervenes to calmly stop the sexual assault of which Océane is the victim.
“She said she wanted him to stop”
Océane says she was “trapped” by a homeless man in a wheelchair nicknamed “the sorcerer-guru” in street circles. The young woman, now 23 years old, denounces non-consensual cunnilingus, under threat of a knife. Océane and her attacker are hidden between the parking lot wall and a car parked on level -1. Two places further on, the “savior”, as the lawyer for the civil party Me Fabienne Gouteyron called her, will get out of her car once parked and will pass not far from Océane for the first time without really paying attention to the grunts of her young dog.
Realizing that she has to get a parking ticket, she passes again and then hears voices more clearly, while her dog continues to growl. “I heard the voice of a young woman saying ‘please I’ll give you some money’, I intervened because she was very clear, she said she wanted him to stop” , the young educator testifies at the bar.
“He tried to hide his crotch”
The “savior” also affirms that she also took care before intervening to establish eye contact with Océane and saw “by her look that it was not right”. “I grabbed the man by the shirt and pulled him back, he tried to hide his crotch,” she recalled. Once he got back into his wheelchair, parked nearby, he grabbed her wrists and even touched her chest. “I said I didn’t agree and I walked away,” says the witness. He scared me but I saw that she was even more scared than me, I didn’t want her to be alone. »
She later learned that the attacker was armed, and had, according to Océane, hidden his knife under a hat.
“What works best is to manage by being calm”
According to the 27-year-old young woman, the man seemed embarrassed by her arrival, he asked her to leave several times, arguing that he did not need an “escort”. He will aggressively throw his clothes and bicycle helmet towards Océane, who is forcibly undressed. “He spoke very loudly, it was intimidating and embarrassing,” remembers the “rescuer” who says that the attacker threatened his victim with reprisals if she spoke. The young educator will stay with Océane until she is safe. Together, in a café, they can take a breather.
“I have been a facilitator with adolescents with psychotic disorders, who could be dangerous for themselves or others and, what works best is to manage by being calm and avoiding making the person feel threatened”, explains the “savior” to the president of the court who questions her about her ability to keep her senses in such a situation. “I modeled my attitude” on that of Océane, adds the woman whose behavior was praised by the attorney general: “hats off madame, you intervened and you supported her with humanity. “.